Classroom Agreements vs. Rules

It is amazing the impact that a shift in language can have on a classroom culture. How we set expectations with our students at the beginning of each year is no different. There are hundreds of thousands of posters available online and in stores to help you post your rules–but this makes them your rules. They do not belong to the children. They have been imposed by the adult and do not inspire any buy-in or ownership. The answer to this is to adjust our language and collaboratively create classroom agreements with the children instead of presenting rules to the children.

There are five phases to generating classroom agreements (aka classroom contracts, peace pledges, etc.):

1. Introducing the activity
2. Brainstorming
3. Revising
4. Making it official
5. Mutual accountability

Introducing the Classroom Agreements Activity

In the first phase you will need a whiteboard or chart paper and markers. Gather as a classroom community. Introduce the task. Here are some helpful phrases:

• “What community do you live in? (Children usually say the city.) Yes! What does it mean to live in community with other people? (take care of each other, etc.) Our classroom is also a community. We will be together for about 7 hours a day for 180 school days! (this can be group math if appropriate). That is 1,260 hours together this school year!”
• “Have you ever had an argument with someone in your household? Yes, when we spend a lot of time with a group of people we will not always get along. Everyone has good days and bad days. We make good choices and we make mistakes. Our classroom is like this too–we will spend a lot of time together, and we might feel upset every now and then about something. However, we need a plan for solving problems and helping everyone have what they need.”

Brainstorming

Once you have introduced the classroom agreements activity, ask questions to help students brainstorm what agreements the class may need. This can be done with positive language:

• “What guidelines can we suggest to help everyone get along and have what they need in our classroom?”

OR (what often comes a little more easily to children), begin with helping them think of actions we hope to avoid in our classroom:

• “What might be something that can make you upset in a classroom? At recess? What could disrupt you from your work? (Make a list of all the things kids don’t want to happen). Can we think of advice for each other on what we should do to help our classroom run smoothly and avoid these problems?”

Try to record every idea. Some may needed guided more than others to become a bullet point on your brainstorming list through asking questions of your respondent. It’s ok if the list is long, or includes very specific scenarios. We want children to feel that they contributed to the process, so the goal is to see at least one idea from each child on the list. This active engagement in the process will lead to a sense of ownership and buy-in. There will be a revision process before your final agreements are created, anyway.

Revision of Classroom Agreements

Goals for revising a brainstorm list into a classroom agreement:

Positive Wording

Either way we approach our brainstorming for our classroom agreements, we want to guide students into framing them as positive statements vs. negative statements. Focus on the desired behavior instead of the behavior we hope to avoid. Examples:

• “Walk in the classroom” instead of “Don’t run”
• “Use kind words” instead of “Don’t make fun of people”
• “Share materials” instead of “Don’t hog materials”

This is a great exercise in reframing our thinking, beyond just helping create a classroom agreement. If possible, positively frame each item on your brainstorming list.

Use General Language

The brainstorming list your students came up with likely has some very specific or similar ideas on it. This is a great time to notice some key words that come up repeatedly, like “respect”. The younger your students, the more basic you may want to leave your list. This actually might mean it ends up having more items on it. The balance is creating language specific enough for concrete-thinkers to understand while still leaving wording general enough to apply to any situation that may arise. For example, if your list says “share pencils” you can ask “Are pencils the only thing we need to share in our room?” and guide students to a revision of “share materials”. This is general enough that you will be able to refer to it throughout the year with a variety of situations.

The alternative is that the list be narrowed down to some very general values that can guide the classroom community. For example, I often find that our class can collaboratively distill down a very long brainstorming list into the sentence “respect ourselves, each other, and the environment”. I can refer to this broad classroom value to discuss almost any issue that comes up with my classroom.

This level of simplicity may not be your goal, though. While its breadth is helpful, it may be too advanced for some students to self-monitor. In addition, each community is unique and there may be items that are so important that, even though they could fit into one of these broad categories, they are worth pulling out individually. For example, with a classroom of children that worry about their safety or physical needs being met, we may add to our respect statement values that address these concerns. These might include “we will keep each other safe” or “we will ask for what we need”. Even within the same environment, different classes of children from year to year have different needs. For example, “we will ask questions” has been helpful as a primary tenant for my classroom some years.

There is not one right answer to your final product. It will be a collaborative and living process between yourself and students, guided by many influencing factors, such as:

• Your personality and expectations
• The school’s policies around behavior
• The home cultures of your students
• The personalities, strengths, and challenges of your students
• What is happening in the world (what students are hearing about it)

The main goal is to focus on the collaborative process, even more than the product itself. If you do this, there is no wrong answer.

Making It Official

Once you have your revised classroom agreement, a ritual or tradition to “make it official” can make it more momentous for the students. This could include singing a song together as it is hung on the wall or all signing it before it goes up, for example. Some sort of ceremony to wrap up the project sets the tone for how important these agreements will be for the rest of your year.

Mutual Accountability

Hanging the poster on the wall is just the first step of a classroom agreement. The real magic lies in how it is used in daily classroom life. Because of the process through which this agreement was created, using it along with a shift in your language can move your classroom from top-down discipline to child-centered classroom management.

When the teacher makes the rules, the teacher is solely responsible for enforcing them. The awareness of the behaviors, the decision making process for handling the behaviors, and the accountability or consequences for the behavior all fall on the teacher. Not only is this an unsustainable model, but it is counter-productive. It wastes the many opportunities children have each day to learn the life skills they need to be a part of a community and manage themselves.

Classroom agreements take advantage of this opportunity to teach children these life skills that will help them be productive citizens of the world. This not only helps the students thrive, but as they gradually learn skills of self-awareness and community-mindedness they begin to have a positive impact on the entire class. Their leadership spreads. This makes the teacher’s role more enjoyable. Children are “teaching” themselves, their peers–the role of classroom management has now become a communal task. This is better for the teacher and for the students.

Shifting Awareness

Help children notice their behaviors themselves. Try to avoid being the “behavior meter” going around telling kids that they are being too loud or not getting enough work done. This is not teaching them to recognize their own volume or productivity. All they know is when you decide it needs addressed. Building these internal meters is the work of holistic education. This could be with devices that notice volume, helping them notice the facial expressions of their peers, or noticing a behavior to them (like a scientist, without judgement) and asking them questions about it.

For example, if a child hits another student the first step (after making sure the injured party is ok) is to remove them from the situation until they are able to calm themselves and control their bodies. The second step is often to help them make amends to the other person they hurt, to give both parties closure and a chance to determine how to move forward. The third step, though, can be questions designed to build the student’s self awareness.

• Why did you hit him?
• What were you feeling?
• Where in your body did you feel it?
• What caused the feeling?
• What could you have done instead when you had that feeling?

Shifting Language

Refer back to the classroom agreement and its community roots when addressing behaviors.

Instead of “Be quiet” when students are speaking too loudly during work time:

• I notice…”I notice I can hear your conversation from across the room.” (This is measurable, not opinion based, and could be noticed by anyone, not just the teacher.)
• We set a goal in our classroom agreement… “In our classroom agreement we said we would respect our community’s learning by using voices that only our neighbor we’re talking to can hear.” (Another helpful phrase can be using a voice that “stays at your table with you”.)
• Recall moment…”Do you remember why that was important?” (so people can concentrate)
• Request…”Please use a voice only your neighbor can hear.”

This shifting of language to refer to the classroom agreements serves several purposes:

• It puts the accountability for self-monitoring on the child
• It recalls the investment of their peers in their own following of the agreements
• It reduces the likelihood of a power struggle between student and teacher (the teacher is simply making a scientific observation and referring to something the child helped make)

Here are some more resources on classroom agreements:

• Using Community Agreements to Start the Year Strong
• How to Create Classroom Agreements Using Poetry | Edutopia
• Developing Class Participation Agreements
• Sample Lesson Plan: Generating Classroom Shared Agreements – Casel Schoolguide
• How to Create a Student-Led Classroom Social Contract | Teach Starter

And make sure to follow Montessori Minds for more classroom management strategies!